From My Puppy Pulpit: Cary's Downward Spiral Could Have Happened Here

Bongo read the local cover story from today’s Northwest Herald with interest. “D-26 Bond in Voters’ Hands” barked the headline.

Bongo did a double-take, because Bongo knows that there are some Larry Snow loyalists on the Cary school board and that “Referendum” is a bad word in that circle.

So Bongo read the article, and sure enough those who have been vocal in their support of Snow voted against putting the bond referendum before District 26 voters.

Never mind that the funds from the ballot question would pay to fix failing roofs, replace old buses and provide kids with educational technology. Never mind that the proceeds would also be used to fix parking and sidewalks and to update heating and air conditioning systems.

A portion of the proceeds would also be used to move the district out of the red (they have a deficit spending problem), and eliminate the need for expensive short term borrowing every year. Currently, D 26 flushes thousands of dollars each year down the toilet in interest payments for these short term loans. Taxpayers in Cary should be outraged at the mismanagement and waste the board has created under the guise of being “for the taxpayer”.

“Without the bond issue, the district will slip further into red ink and fall behind on needed facility improvements,” is what their finance guy Todd Drafall told the board members prior to the vote.

Still, the vote was 4-3 to put the question on the ballot and to let the voters decide if the benefits of a successful bond initiative outweighed the tax increase that would result.

Why does Bongo bring this up? Because to this day Snow insists that the past referendums in District 158 weren’t needed. In fact, four years ago when Snow ran for office the first time, he ran on a platform of reversing the referendum that paid for teachers to staff the new schools, erased D 158’s deficit and eliminated the need to pay outrageous interest for short term loans.

It was argued by Snow, CRAFT, and the other new anti-school board members in Cary that D-26 had a spending problem – not a revenue problem, and that fund balances for working capital were not needed. Four years later, the district is spiraling downward in a whirlpool of red ink and is unable to maintain their facilities properly or pay for day-to-day operations without borrowing expensive short term funds. The only outcome will be a reduction in educational services and opportunities. This outcome does not serve the public (taxpayer), for it represents a reduction in value for the same money paid.

Those of you who lived in District 158 four years ago know we came within a whisker of this same scenario. Yet Snow continues to insist that he was right in spite of the fact that everyone else, including finance experts such as Tony Quagliano, now say that the 2004 referendum was paramount in putting District 158 onto the solid financial footing it enjoys today.